Banquet of Belonging: Faith, Food & the Psychology of Healing: A Radix Live Conversation with Jeannie E. Celestial

A Conversation with Psychologist & Best-Selling Author Jeannie E. Celestial

Many from marginalized communities suffer from the mental health impacts of oppression and discrimination. Dr. Jeannie Celestial, co-author of Clinical Interventions for Internalized Oppression, shares her discoveries about possibilities for healing, particularly among women of color, through the lens of mental health practices and Christian faith. In this, Dr. Celestial explores the role of "food as medicine," which richly informs The Filipino Instant Pot Cookbook, her culinary offering that has sold worldwide.

Dr. Celestial is a licensed clinical psychologist, currently serving in the San Francisco Unified School District through RAMS, a large social services agency in the Bay Area. She has over two decades of experience in healing and transformational practices. She employs EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing), Brainspotting, CBT, ACT, and other modalities in her work. Dr. Celestial earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Palo Alto University, with emphases in Clinical Neuropsychology and Meditation and Psychology.…

Karen González on Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in Our Christian Response to Immigration

Karen González is a speaker, writer, storyteller, and immigrant advocate who herself immigrated from Guatemala as a child. Karen is a former public school teacher and attended Fuller Theological Seminary, where she studied theology and missiology. For the last 17 years, she has been a non-profit professional. She wrote a book about her own immigration story and some of the immigrants found in the Bible: The God Who Sees: Immigrants, The Bible, and the Journey to Belong (Herald Press, May 2019). Karen’s second book is Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in our Christian Response to Immigration (Brazos Press, October 2022). She also has bylines in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and others.

In this interview, Karen digs into the concept of hospitality (which can be subversive!), where traditional boundaries are challenged by bringing together people from all walks of life—immigrants, students, the unhoused, and community members—as equals. Through real-life examples, the conversation explores the discomfort and growth that arise when we share space with those we might not otherwise encounter. Karen highlights the power of genuine hospitality to break down social barriers, foster mutual respect, and create inclusive communities where everyone is valued. Ultimately, Karen’s books and this conversation point to the need to reimagine hospitality as a radical, transformative act that centers dignity and equality for all.…

Liberating Scripture, with Michael Barram and John R. Franke: An Author Event by NCB’s Radix Live

What if the way we read scripture is part of the problem?

This Radix Live event offers a chance to learn about how we can join a growing, creative, justice-minded conversation on what it means to read scripture missionally in today’s world.

In Liberating Scripture: An Invitation to Missional Hermeneutics, authors Michael Barram and John R. Franke proposed a bold rethinking of biblical interpretation. Rooted in the “mission of God” and informed by postcolonial and postmodern insights, their work invited readers to unshackle the Bible from the theological and cultural chains that often distort its liberative power.

This live conversation explores how Liberating Scripture reframes the why and how of biblical interpretation. The book offers an accessible yet groundbreaking introduction to “missional hermeneutics”—a fresh approach to reading scripture through the lens of God’s ongoing mission of justice, healing, and reconciliation. Rather than treating the Bible as a static set of doctrines, this perspective emphasizes dynamic, community-rooted engagement. How do our cultural assumptions shape the questions we ask of scripture? How might diverse voices and global experiences help us decolonize Christian witness?…

“Just Making” with Mitali Perkins: An Author Event by NCB’s Radix Live

Why should we make art while injustice and suffering wreak havoc? How can we justify making beautiful things? Author Mitali Perkins isn't afraid of hard questions about justice and art. She knows that the creative life can seem selfish. As the daughter of immigrants, she studied toward a career of eradicating poverty and knows the internal voice that challenges: "How dare you retreat to your studio to create?"
Yet Perkins learned that writing fiction wasn't setting aside her passion for a better world but pursuing it. In Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives, she offers a justice-driven perspective unique among books on creativity. "My ancestors are village Bengali women who made beautiful things but didn't dare to dream of art as a career," she writes. Women across the globe have crafted beauty and order amid chaos, war, and deprivation, and Perkins turns our attention to what we learn from them.
Just Making introduces us to strategies such as forgetfulness in flow, tenderness in trauma, and crossing borders.…

From Solitude to Solidarity: Ron Dart on Evelyn Underhill and the Contemplative Path (NCB’s Radix Live)

What does contemplation have to do with the everyday life of faith? And why does it matter now?

Words like stillness, centering prayer, silence, meditation, attention, and contemplation were finding renewed resonance in Christian conversation. But what did they actually mean—and what did they mean for the rest of us? In this interactive online event, Ron Dart explored how the contemplative path is not a spiritual luxury for the few, but a vital calling for the many—a way of seeing, praying, and being that Evelyn Underhill might have called "the education of the whole person."

Ron introduced Underhill, one of Christianity’s most respected guides to the inner life, and reflected on her wisdom for our anxious and noisy age. Drawing from her writings, he unpacked why contemplation is not only personal but communal—not withdrawal from the world, but a way to be more deeply present in it. The event also…

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